Julie-Anne Roth

Julie-Anne Roth is a French and Canadian actress and filmmaker. At first, she was fascinated by cinema and wished to become a director of photography, but her literature studies at the French university La Sorbonne in Paris, lead her to join a theatre's company. She began by performing great roles in Shakespeare's plays, and in 1993, she made her debuts with the French directors Patrice Chereau (La Reine Margot, Queen Margot) and Cédric Klapish (Le Péril Jeune, The Good Old Daze). As she continued to advance her career in cinema and theatre, in particular playing several Shakespearean heroines, she joined the National Drama School (Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique) and graduated in 1999.

Julie-Anne steadily continues to make her mark both on cinema and theatre (The Syrian Bride by Eran Riklis, David and Mme Hansen, by Alexandre Astier, C'est quoi la vie? (What's Life?) by François Dupeyron); she also wrote her own play, On ne me pissera pas éternellement sur la gueule (They won’t pee in my face for ever), which was rewarded in 2012 and wrote and directed her first short, En avant calme et droit (Big Up).

Big Up reveals a certain idea of cinema. Seen once, seen again and dreamed of: a cinema which is written, but never literary (Eustache). Filmmaking without story-boards, but with frames. A free cinema, ambitious and independent (independent of "good taste", fashions and expectations). A cinema that assumes and claims admiration for Baumbach, Allen, Andrea Arnold, Appatow, Lena Dunham, Alex Ross Perry's The Color Wheel, Azazel Jacobs' Terri. A cinema unaware of it's inventiveness, for it's the doing that leads to the understanding of what has been done. That's my way. I deeply believe in retroactive intentions, those we had before, but without knowing it, and that we discover later, once the film is done.